strange observations in plant coverage

[onk]

As I might have the wrong conclusion, I would like ask others before submitting an issue.

I have a habbitat of 988 m². In dry condidion my croco has an useable area of 774 m².

In "wet" condition ( lake is filled ) it has a land area of 328 m² and water area of 486 m²

So, no problem with this numbers/calculations.. make sense.

But, in dry condition I have a plant-coverage of 17%, in wet condition of 36%....Which could make sense if all plants are just affecting the land area....but I also have them in or over the water.

And furthermore...If I now place plants within the water, the coverage still raises....

So....might there be a bug or a non propper way in the calculation that just takes the plant size and calculates it vs the land-area no matter where the plants are?

 

[onk]

I did another test in a sandbox zoo, without any animal.

I created a square habitat, which I can fill partly with water:

Now I take a tree with 144 m² coverage with leads to 7% habitat coverage. If I calculate the 144 m2 vs the 2260 m² I get 6,37%...so this is ok:

After filling the left area with water, the number raises to 14% ...if we calculate the 144 m² vs the land area of 1216 m² we get around 11,84%...which is not 14...but, there might be some other fixed value involved....so that's still "ok":

If I drag the tree above or into the water...nothing changes, the tree is still calculated vs the land area.

I also tested it with more trees, different land/water ratio. The issue is the same, you can easly get 100% coverage with two trees, just by adding water.

But in other cases the game is recognizing just partly coverage , for example if you place a tree in the barrier only the half of the tree is taken for coverage:

Also, if you take 4 trees and you move them close together, you don't get the same coverage....so in some cases the calculation seems to be quite clever:

Considering, that the game is capable of making distinctions in some cases, I request that it does a better job when water is involved.
Or at least, as a workaround, that it calculates the coverage vs the habitat-area and not the land-area.
I opened an issue: https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/14748. So if you like, feel free to contribute.

 

[DrBurrito]

Have you done the same test with separate but identical enclosures that aren't near one another?

The reason why I'm asking this is, currently plant coverage calculations get bugged even if you add another plant to the habitat bordering your first habitat that don't even share the new plant asset's additional coverage. For instance you add a new tree to the other habitat but your coverage in the bordering habitat goes down.

So the water related issue might be linked to this other bug; therefore to be able to pinpoint the exact problem I would suggest you to do two separate tests.

 

[onk]

I could not reproduce a change in a bordering habitat, by placing a tree within the first habitat.
But there is something else, when moving a tree is involved.

So two habitats, next to each other, same size ( nearly a few m² off). One tree left, two trees right....looks ok

now I drag the tree to the left....the coverage on the right...goes down....but on the left nothing happens.
And yes, after each move, I left the moving tool, waited, and clicked each habitat to look into the numbers.

When I now do a blueprint of the left one, and place it elsewhere...the tree is recognized and the coverage seems to be correct:

And finally, if I drag the tree a bit more, the coverage is also ok.

I also tested what happens if you save the park in a "in between"-case....yes it stays the same after reload....

So, this is another...maybe less anoying issue...and of course, both have the same conclusion, the coverage calculation is in some situations not correct.
At least this "drag" issue might be usefull in some cases ;-)

 

[Haunt]

The drag issue actually makes sense (but is still a bug - good find!)

What is happening there is that the left area is simply not being alerted that it needs to refresh because the plant object is still being read by the system as belonging to the right habitat. A copy of the left habitat will show the full 15% minus whatever part of the tree is not in the habitat bounds making the 14%. Eventually as you showed moving it just enough that the old habitat "relinquishes" ownership will make the left habitat refresh calculations. Meanwhile the right side dropping in coverage value is because the plant is still registering as being "owned" by the habitat, but the actual benefits are decreasing as more of the plant is out of bounds. As best I can tell this bug is caused by two habitats not being able to both own the same plant (or shelter) object and a failure of the system to increase by fractions without ownership.

The water issue on the other hand is nothing that needs any changes / is not a bug... the coverage is calculated just on the mass of the plant's coverage in comparison to the habitat's total land mass, and any plants inside the boundaries counts even if placed in water. This is working as intended. This "exploit" you mentioned is actually not a big deal nor a bug.

 

[onk]

The water issue on the other hand is nothing that needs any changes / is not a bug.

Considering that in some cases overlapping plants, plants partly out of the habitat are calculated very well, the rather simple implementation when water is involved is probably not appropriate.
If it needs changes is maybe a matter of opinion....or a matter of animals....
We already have animals that need a lot of water area, sometimes the same amount than land. In some cases, depending on group size, even more water than land.
So as a mechanism that causes results or effects that are not intended, I call it a bug.
I don't think the devs hate crocos.....

 

[DrBurrito]

I could not reproduce a change in a bordering habitat, by placing a tree within the first habitat.

Don't know under what circumstances it happens, so I need to test it myself to recall. There are so many variables that can alter the results.

 

[Haunt]

Considering that in some cases overlapping plants, plants partly out of the habitat are calculated very well, the rather simple implementation when water is involved is probably not appropriate.
...
So as a mechanism that causes results or effects that are not intended, I call it a bug.

Let me explain myself more clearly, and my apologies for not saying it in the first post. And you are probably completely aware of all that I am about to say, but I am putting it down for anyone who is not aware and as a basis for why I said what I did.

Plant coverage needed is based on a percentage of the total available pathable by the animal land mass.
Pathable by the animal land mass is calculated such that if any part of the habitat becomes unpathable by the animals / keepers then the calculations removes it from the visible numbers.
Currently adding water mass subtracts the total land mass rather than remaining constant. This is because water messes up the pathing quite a bit and is simply easier to just handle it this way rather than wasting your computer's resources trying to compute the land mass constantly.
Plants are allowed to be installed in the water filled areas in order to allow people to decorate as they wish, and some plants normally are found in water or nearby it anyway.

Now, having said all of that, the only ways to "fix" this situation would either require no longer allowing plants to be added in water - which I have already explained is not something that is desirable, or have your computer's cycles constantly wasted in recalculating the water area pathing - and considering how laggy and fps dropping it already is that is not something we would want, or completely change how habitat mass is calculated so that rocks and walls would not decrease the mass - but that in turn would mean that habitats that include a lot of landscaping or decorative pieces would have less space for plants but require more of it comparatively than they do now.

I call it "not a bug" because it is more or less the best system the developers can create without breaking something else that is currently working well. I also call it that because I believe the developers have deliberately built the requirements for plant coverage system taking the current way land mass calculations are done in mind. I more or less believe it is working as intended, and further the only ways to improve it at this point would just break other things that are currently working as intended as well.

To me anything that is working as intended and any changes would make things stop working as intended should be considered "not a bug" despite whether it might look a bit odd if looked at critically in extreme conditions.

 

[onk]

We are both "guessing", if it's intended and compensated or there are side-effects that are not intended. Wether change is an improvement or does cause problems.

In my case it's not mainly about plants in the water ...it's more or less about plants "at" the water. Everything that is touching the habitat is counted.(yes not fully, but a bit here and there)

This is not a big issue when you have maybe 3/4 land and 1/4 water...but if you have 1/3 land and 2/3 water, which is for some animals the right amount, the effect is huge.

So you try to compensate, place really few plants inside, drag and even remove plants around the habitat to get the coverage requirement. But if you have a tropical environment that looks like plains you think…no that does not look nearly like in a real zoo.
What do you do as player....you observe and report. If it's possible to change it or not and if a change cause problems is highly speculative as what we think how it's done now.

So we will see. At least they already changed things I did not believed they would ;-)